8mm Forum: Last Train from Gun Hill

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Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 13, 2015, 03:21 PM:

Not a film i was particularly keen to watch tonight but have to say it is actually one of best westerns i have seen in a long time.
Storyline, (thanks to a little help from Wikipedia),
Two old friends, Matt Morgan (Kirk Douglas) and Craig Belden (Anthony Quinn), now find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Belden is the de facto ruler of the town of Gun Hill, a rich cattle baron. Morgan is a U.S. marshal living in another town with his Native American wife (played by Ziva Rodann) and young son, Petey.
Two young drunken cowboys rape and murder Morgan's wife while she is returning with their son from a visit to her father. The boy escapes on one of the killers' horses, bearing a distinctive, fancy saddle.
Morgan sets off to find the killer. His one clue is the saddle, which he recognizes as belonging to Belden. Assuming it was stolen from his old friend, Morgan travels to Gun Hill to pick up the trail, but once there he quickly realizes that Belden's son Rick (Earl Holliman) is the killer.
Belden refuses to turn over his son, forcing Morgan to go against the entire town. He vows to capture Rick and get him on that night's last train from Gun Hill.
Morgan takes Rick prisoner, holding him at the hotel. Belden sends men to rescue his son, but Morgan manages to hold them off. In the meantime, Belden's former lover (Jones) decides to help Morgan. She sneaks a shotgun to his hotel room. The second rapist, Lee, sets fire to the hotel to flush out Morgan.
Morgan presses the shotgun to Rick's chin on the way to the train depot, threatening to pull the trigger if anyone attempts to stop him. Lee tries to kill Morgan but shoots Rick instead. Morgan then kills Lee with the shotgun. As the train prepares to leave, a devastated Belden confronts Morgan in a final showdown and is gunned down.

This was released in the cinema circuit by Paramount, hopefully someone can enlighten me as to who released this feature film on Super 8, originally on 5 x 400 foot spools and in full screen colour sound. The sound is excellent although we do have two short drop-outs on our copy.
I was expecting the colour to have gone by now as some screenshots we have seen from other copies are literally red. We were pleasantly surprised to see only light colour fade, the images i have here dont do it justice as the blacks are still black, in fact its a bit odd, it appears that the day time scenes on reel 2 have faded the most with all indoor and dark scenes still being excellent. We did purchased this print many years ago for something Scilly, around £30 due to some scratching but there's no tram lines here and after a good clean its actually come up pretty good, its the first time i have watched this and its defiantly got a lot of repeatability, not your run of mill western with cowboys and Indians it does have a very good storyline and two top leading actors.

Well recommended even if your not a western fan.
[Wink]

[ March 16, 2019, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: Tom Photiou ]

Posted by Alexander Vandeputte (Member # 1803) on August 13, 2015, 03:41 PM:

Great western indeed. Your print is less faded than mine. Super 8 print was released by Viacom both as a full length feature and as a 400 foot digest.

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on August 13, 2015, 03:48 PM:

I had the 400 and the full feature. The 400 had colour fade but the print of the full feature had nearly perfect colour. Whether they originated from different sources I am not sure.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 13, 2015, 03:49 PM:

thanks Alexander, i thought it may have been Viacom,its a shame there fading,even with ours we know its just a matter of time.

Posted by David Skillern (Member # 607) on August 14, 2015, 04:09 AM:

Hi Tom,

I watched my copy a few weeks ago and it's a great film - quite moody and adult for the time of its original release - but an excellent cast and Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn are excellently matched - my print has slight fade but it's a cracking watch.

David

Posted by Gary Crawford (Member # 67) on August 14, 2015, 06:30 AM:

The feature , as I remember, was also offered by Niles films and others in the USA. I saw a part of a print back in the late 70's that came from Niles. It was very good. I'm not sure, but I thought Red Fox might have offered it as well.

Posted by Mark Silvester (Member # 929) on August 15, 2015, 04:22 AM:

Great film,

exciting - taut storyline that builds up to an exciting crescendo..

Have to say Tom your screen shots..appear to give the impression, in my eyes anyway...of it being almost totally red. I never could watch red prints...unless the were b/w prints on colour stock...then I would use a filter. Good film though. [Smile]

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on August 15, 2015, 10:50 AM:

If title was released from different sources that might explain why some prints have retained colour better than others

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on August 15, 2015, 11:34 AM:

A really superb Western, right up there with the best. I have both the Ken 400ft digest and the Viacom feature, The digest still has superb color with deep saturation and is a very sharp print. My Viacom feature print looks like Tom's screen shots- almost totally red. This too is an extremely sharp print and when you watch it you can only imagine how stunning it must have looked when it was first released on super 8mm, and can only weep that it was not releasd on low fade stock.
By the way, when was this first released as a super 8 feature?

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 15, 2015, 01:48 PM:

it is odd how in these pictures came out,what you cant see here is how goodthe indoor and night time scenes do actually look, on here they appear faded but they do still have good saturated colours,its the daylight scenes which are worse, its very odd but good news for us

Posted by Steven J Kirk (Member # 1135) on August 27, 2015, 03:33 AM:

I've only got the 400ft digest of this one. Faded a little but the sound is the worst thing and very 'telephony'. Great film though, was originally VISTAVISION and wouldn't a 16mm print be great. One of the best westerns and second only to High Noon in my opinion.

Posted by Joseph Randall (Member # 4906) on August 27, 2015, 06:14 PM:

I've never seen this but now I'll be on the look out for when TCM shows it.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 28, 2015, 02:52 PM:

Joseph, it is a really good film & two great actors.

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